We fight wars to defend it, vote to uphold it and pride ourselves upon it. But what's so good about democracy?

In this wide-ranging talk, Professor John Keane, author of The Life and Death of Democracy, discusses the history of an evolving ideal that continues to shape our world, from the Ancients through to today.

John Keane

John Keane is an Australian-born British political theorist. Educated at the Universities of Adelaide, Toronto and Cambridge, Keane is currently Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney. He still spends some of his time as visiting professor there. In 1989, Keane founded the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster. In recent years, Keane has held the Karl Deutsch Professorship in Berlin and served as Gavron Fellow of the think-tank, Institute for Public Policy Research.

Among his many books are The Media and Democracy, which has been translated into more than twenty-five languages; plus Democracy and Civil Society; Reflections on Violence; Civil Society: Old Images, New Visions; and the prize-winning biography Tom Paine: A Political Life. Among his most recent works are Global Civil Society?, Violence and Democracy, (with Wolfgang Merkel and others) The Future of Representative Democracy and The Life and Death of Democracy.